MIAMI—In the history of the NBA Finals, it is rare to find a team getting to this point and deciding to change up its starting five. In the previous 15 Finals, not counting injury-related changes, there were only six lineup moves—but in this series, each team has already made two alterations to its starters, and the question remains whether we’ll see more.

In Game 4, Spoelstra—seeking added shooting power to bolster the offense and create space in the halfcourt—inserted Mike Miller, going with a small lineup that had LeBron James at power forward. The Heat won that game, though Miller did not score. Moving Miller into the lineup forced forward Udonis Haslem to the bench, and knocked big man Chris Andersen out of the rotation altogether.

Popovich responded in Game 5 by going small, too, removing Tiago Splitter and inserting Manu Ginobili. Popovich said after that game that he had two objectives with the move—first, to match the Heat’s small look, and, second, to ignite the struggling Ginobili. Ginobili responded with 24 points and 10 assists. The Spurs won that game.

Splitter has had much the same fate as Andersen. He played 13 minutes in Game 4 and 10 in Game 5.

If it seems like a chess match between the two coaches, Spoelstra reminds us there’s more to it than that. “It’s important to understand we’re trying to win basketball games,” he said. “Win the competition of basketball. We’re not trying to win chess. When we lost in Game 5, it wasn’t necessarily because of what we did wrong. They did a lot of things right and they played much better than us and deserved to win. So tonight is about our response.”